Latest Comscore numbers confirm Android beats Blackberry

Mike Luttrell, 8th March 2011

Mirroring a report from Nielsen last week, the latest numbers from respected mobile industry tracker Comscore show that Android is now the most popular smartphone platform in the country, putting an end to the seemingly unbeatable Blackberry operating system.
Comscore reports that in January, Android swelled to a market share in the US of 31.2%. That's an amazing 7.7 percentage point jump from just three months earlier, in October, when it had just 23.5% of the market.

Meanwhile, Blackberry plummeted, continuing its huge, rapid decline, down to 30.4% of the smartphone market share. That's down 5.4 percentage points from October, and well over 10 points compared to this time last year.

This solidifies Android's foothold as the #1 smartphone operating system in the country, a feat that many saw not as a matter of if but a matter of when. Few expected it to happen this quickly, though.

The numbers for both Android and Blackberry have been remarkable. While other smartphone platforms see hardly any change in market share, these two have been swinging wildly throughout all of 2010 and now continuing into 2011.

Blackberry had been the undisputed leader in smartphones in the US. Its fall from power - and that it happened to fast - is nothing short of stunning. The alarms most certainly are going off at the headquarters of Research in Motion if they haven't already.

Meanwhile, changes to Apple's iOS platform remained relatively flat. By the end of January, Comscore says it has a 24.7% market share, compared to October's 24.6% figure. This trend has been commonplace over several months, where Android sees huge gains, Blackberry sees huge declines, and iOS just sits by the sidelines.